Mark Serreze: Antarctic Sea Ice "Record Low Minimum No Matter What Happens Right Now" - WP
EDIT
In 38 years of records dating back to 1979, the sea ice lows seen as of the end of February 2017 — a time of year when ice in the Antarctic is at its annual minimum — are unprecedented. The area of ocean covered by sea ice still appears to be shrinking, but as of Feb. 28, there were just 2.131 million square kilometers of floating ice surrounding Antarctica, according to near-real time data provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
That’s much less than the prior low of 2.29 million square kilometers on Feb. 27, 1997. The difference — about 159,000 square kilometers, or 61,390 square miles — amounts to an area nearly as large as Florida. Here’s what 2017 (the light blue line) looks like when you compare it with the other four lowest years in the record (1984, 1993, 1997 and 2011), based on the helpful “Charctic” tool offered by the National Snow and Ice Data Center:
The data here are reported as a five-day average and should not be considered final — there could still be adjustments. And the ice could go lower before it rebounds as colder temperatures begin to return to the Antarctic. Still, the margin is large enough that a record is unavoidable, says Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, although he said his group will wait to call one formally until they’re sure an annual minimum has been reached and the ice is growing again.
“It’s going to be a record low minimum no matter what happens right now, it’s just a matter of, how low do we go,” Serreze said Monday. “It could be any day now.” (The ice is even lower now than it was when we spoke.)
EDIT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/01/antarctic-ice-has-set-an-unexpected-record-and-scientists-are-struggling-to-figure-out-why/?utm_term=.d0bf620eac0d
